This invention relates to an electronic musical instrument which has a function to clearly indicate performance operators (typically, Keyboard keys) to be operated to a player and thereby allows the player to do performance practice on the instrument in an effective manner.
Electronic musical instruments, such as those having a keyboard, are conventionally known which, in accordance with predetermined performance timing of an automatic performance, sequentially visibly indicate or display operators to be worked or operated to a player by use of lamps, LEDs or other suitable means. Some of such musical instruments indicate keys to be depressed by lighting LEDs provided in corresponding relations with the keys in accordance with predetermined performance timing of an automatic performance and thereby visibly inform the player which keys are to be depressed. By sequentially depressing the thus-indicated keys, the player can do performance practice on the musical instrument.
An electronic musical instrument of the above-mentioned type is disclosed for example in Japanese Patent Publication No. SHO 63-18752. The disclosed technique attempts to permit more effective performance practice by indicating, for each phrase of a given music piece, all keys to be depressed at one time so as to have the player use his own judgement to select each key to be depressed.
Music pieces are composed in a variety of different manners, among which there may be such music pieces where only a few keys are to be depressed in one phrase, yet these keys vary over a wide pitch range from relatively high pitch to relatively low pitch. If the disclosed technique in the Japanese patent publication is used to provide indication of keys to be depressed for such a music piece, the indicated keys in the phrase tend to be so sparse that the player (i.e., one doing performance practice) can not readily or intuitively recognize from the indication which key range is to be depressed. This would cause a significant problem that the player is embarrassed about how to position his hands in order to depress keys.